Soil and Water Conservation Society, Socioeconomic Research Agenda Project Task Force

Soil and Water Conservation Society. Ankeny, Iowa. 1993

Reviewer's Note: The research strategies described in this brief report suggest a more collective model of research in contrast to the individually oriented and more narrowly focused efforts that currently dominate many fields. The recommendations could be applied in a variety of disciplines in the social and natural sciences to foster more meaningful and effective research over the long-term.
Although important strides have been made in monitoring and testing production practices that conserve natural resources more effectively, researchers and practitioners have been less successful in understanding the roles played by farm owners and operators. A critical element of sound resource management strategy is to understand why farmers behave as they do and to suggest how they will respond to various efforts to adopt resource-conserving production techniques.
This ten-page report presents the findings of a task force whose purpose was to examine this dilemma. The group, comprised of leading social scientists and conservation practitioners and headed by William Lockeretz (Tufts University) and Peter Nowak (University of Wisconsin), looked specifically at social science research methods and approaches and suggested strategies and institutional arrangements that represent a qualitative change in the study of resource conservation behavior. The report's recommendations focus on the need for a cumulative, systematic body of knowledge about resource conservation behavior. Recognizing that the adoption of resource-conserving techniques is a complex process, the task force recommends that individual research projects:

• Incorporate clusters of questions that address multiple issues (vs. studying single components) about the meaning and motivation of conservation behavior,
• Include more longitudinal studies (those that track data at intervals over several years),
• Broaden the range of variables used to explain farmers' and ranchers' conservation behavior, particularly the effect of exposure to wrong information or deliberate misinformation,
• Give more attention to comparing and interpreting results obtained under different circumstances.

Such characteristics would present greater opportunities for cooperative research efforts and aggregation of data, in contrast to individually oriented efforts. In order to promote this model widely, the task force suggests two steps for future action:

1. Form a working group of active researchers that meets one or two times a year to exchange ideas, to reach agreement on research methods and to facilitate coordinated planning of multi-site, multi-team projects.
2. Organize periodic meetings with people who are involved with conservation issues in the field, to exchange ideas and to ensure that researchers' perspectives extend beyond their immediate colleagues and topics of interest.

In the long-term, the task force envisions a more ambitious goal: a coordinated national study of regionally oriented experiments using agreed-upon protocols. This study would allow researchers and practitioners to employ their collective wisdom and to generate comparable research results in a way that has never before been possible.
The task force acknowledges that incorporating these new research approaches will be a challenge; however, the approaches also offer the opportunity to contribute significantly to the protection and conservation of essential agricultural and environmental resources.

For more information: Soil and Water Conservation Society. 7515 Northeast Ankeny Road, Ankeny, Iowa 50021-9764.

(GWF.1296)

Contributed by Gail Feenstra